


I'd Run Away With You

by those_forgotten



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, M/M, Running Away, Unrequited Love, based off of "Green Eyes" by Wavves, discontent boys, rooftop chats, sad stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:50:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/those_forgotten/pseuds/those_forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>harry is angsty about not doing anything with his life; louis is angsty that harry doesn't consider "harryandlouis" enough of a life</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Run Away With You

“Do you ever just want to blow this town?” 

They’re sitting on Louis’ roof, alternating between drags on a shared cigarette and gulps out of one of Harry’s father’s vintage bottles. 

(Louis had laughed when he had seen the bottle. “Sauvignon? You’re not trying to impress me, are you, Haz? Won’t you dad no – “ 

“Screw him,” was Harry’s response, and Louis left it at that.) 

It’s nights like these that the words just don’t matter, but at the same time they matter everything to Louis. It’s not summer anymore, and saying things like that can’t just be lazily agreed to. With the chill of November came the knowledge that he’s a senior now. What’s he going to do with his life? What’s he going to do with Harry? 

But it’s near two am and it’s not like he has any answers right now. So he pushes any question of “the future” off for another day. 

“Blow the entire town? Harry, I don’t get around that much.” Normally Harry would bark out a laugh at him, at his welcome humor, because Louis knows that for a teenage boy, Harry thinks an awful lot. And most of the time he just needs Louis not to take anything he says too seriously. 

But he doesn’t laugh. He sets down the bottle, and refuses the cigarette that Louis hands over. “Lou, really. What are we even doing? I spend my Friday nights on your roof getting drunk. I’m nearly seventeen, Louis. What am I doing with my life?” 

Louis doesn’t like it when Harry gets like this. You think too much, he wants to whisper into his skin. You ought to just feel. Do you feel me? Do you feel what I feel?

But much as he doesn’t like it, he’s always the one getting Harry out of these moods. He just doesn’t like it especially tonight because for once, Harry’s anguished mind has landed on the same problem that Louis’ been avoiding. Which means if he’s going to help Harry, he’s going to have to address his own worries. 

“You’re sixteen, babe. Take it easy on yourself,” he hears himself saying, because much as he ought to address his own worries, that’s not going to happen tonight. 

Louis jumps as he hears Harry punch his hand into the shingles, once, twice, hard. 

It’s obviously not what Harry wanted to hear. Maybe it will have to happen tonight. 

“Who are you to take advice from anyway, nineteen-year-old deadbeat,” he hears Harry mutter into the wind. Louis turns sharply towards him, meeting contemptuous green eyes. 

“Don’t. You. Dare,” he spits out, not moving an inch, even as Harry flinches slightly. “You can get the hell off my roof if you think you can just say something like that. Yeah, maybe I haven’t got my GSCEs, but don’t you dare act superior to me, Harry Styles.” 

He took a deep breath and thought through his next words; he wanted them to sting. “We don’t all lead a charmed life as the son of two Cambridge graduates and play happy-family in our posh country house.”

And Harry stutters and looks about ready to cry, which, good. Until he opens his mouth. 

“Louis, I – my dad walked out on us tonight.” 

Well. And Louis’ suddenly caught between the twinge of pain in Harry’s words and the twinge of pain Harry’s words had just caused him. So what would have been words of comfort are delivered awkwardly. 

“I. I shouldn’t have said that. I knew things weren’t all – right. With your dad, I mean. I – know how you feel? But – you’re taking it out on me, which. Isn’t fair.” 

And Harry turns his face to him then, having hidden it behind his hands, and Louis can see moonlit streaks on his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Louis,” and his voice breaks and it’s all Louis’s strength not to break along with it. 

Louis reaches out to touch him, offer some consolation because evidently he can’t say the right thing for his life. But Harry shrinks away and coughs deeply before clearing his throat. 

When he meets Louis’ eyes again, they have a spark behind them that Louis can’t help but be wary of. “Let’s get out of here, Lou. Really,” he says, seeing Louis’ raised eyebrows. Because he really means this. 

And for the first time, Louis really considers it.

And he knows he shouldn’t, he knows so incredibly much that he shouldn’t consider this, because what? He’s eighteen and ready to run away? It’d be foolish and cowardly – and everything that he’s ever wanted. 

Louis had always known, way inside, deeper even than the closet he’d built himself when he realized he fancied his girlfriend’s brother more than he fancied her at fourteen, that Harry was it for him. Even when they’d met at ages three and five, and Louis couldn’t keep his grabby hands from pinching Harry’s dimpled cheeks, and at ten when he got in a fight with boys in his grade for picking on seven-year-old crybaby Harry. And at twelve, when he realized that every time Harry smiled, his heart picked up just a little bit. And at fourteen when sleeping in the same bed – something they’d done for years – felt just a little bit different. 

More than once, he’d tried getting away, tried distancing himself because he didn’t know what Harry had made of him. For as long as he had known Harry, he was his sun. Everything Louis did, it was for Harry, to make him laugh, to surprise him, to give him some form of a hint because hey you yes, you, curly, I love you. 

And every time he forced himself to walk home from school with football blokes instead of with Harry, every time he turned down a movie night with him to go to a party with older kids, every time he slammed the door in Harry’s face because No, unlike you, I have other friends to see, it was still too late. Because the next day Harry would come to him with sad, green eyes and beg Louis’ forgiveness and wonder what he’d done wrong. 

It had always been too late. Louis would never be fast enough to slip out of Harry Styles’ clutches. And he would never be man enough to turn him down, whatever his request. 

And so when the question of running away – and really, actually running away – came up, what could he say? No? Not a day in his life had Louis been able to say no to Harry. 

He knew he was to blame, he knew it as he watched Harry holding his breath, green eyes flitting between his hands, fussing over a loose thread on his jumper, and Louis’ face. 

It was so quiet, even the wind pausing to let Louis be heard over the thumping in his own chest. 

“I’d run away with you.” And if Harry’s awed smile wasn’t enough to make Louis fling himself off the roof, then he didn’t know what was.

After all this time, do you really think I wouldn’t say yes? He wanted to cry because why didn’t Harry know? Louis somehow had always thought that this would be when Harry knew – maybe not in this way exactly, but there would be a time that Harry would just finally open those eyes of his and see, see what Louis has always been for him. And apparently it wasn’t going to happen tonight. 

Harry leans over then, takes Louis’ hand, and holds it in both of his. “You and me, Louis. Just like it’s always been.”

No, Louis wants to whisper into his skin, it’s been you, always you.

**Author's Note:**

> i write too many flipping oneshots


End file.
